The soft-spoken designer is making a lot of noise at the helm of one of fashion's most beloved brands.

It was March 2008 when Hannah MacGibbon took over as creative director of Chloé, but in fashion terms, it was a different era. The financial world had not yet started its free fall, turning global sensibilities on their collective head. Blingy, brassy, skintight, and goth were the looks du jour. And so, for her Spring 2009 debut show, with all eyes upon her after the abrupt exit of Chloé's previous designer, Paulo Melim Anderson, MacGibbon sent out...warm pastels, scalloped edges, tap pants, soft volume, and romantic ruffles. The mood of the moment had us brace for a slap, and we got a kiss instead.

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Unsurprisingly, many critics didn't really know what to make of it. But in the ensuing seasons, MacGibbon has stayed her course, refining what she calls Chloé's "understated, sensitive, real" DNA. With MacGibbon's wool capes, prettily grown-up silk blouses, accessible masculine tailoring, and loads of camel, that universally flattering neutral, Chloé is once again a covetable brand.

What changed? Everything. How nice that there's someone here to dress us now that the dust has started to settle. Note that we've climbed down off the mile-high platforms in the last two years. Now women want to wear things we don't have to work so hard to get into — clothes that comfort and caress us and let us get down to business with confidence, ease, and a good dose of charm.

"It's so important to me for women to feel good. Sexiness and confidence come from feeling relaxed in your clothes. It's not about wearing a piece of architecture," says MacGibbon, in a Chloé distressed-denim work shirt and miniskirt, over a plate of grilled-eggplant salad at the Hôtel Le Bristol in Paris. "It's about sensitivity and touch and creating clothes to live in." Coming from the mellow chick with the shaggy golden mane who took her first-season bow in cut-off jean shorts and knee-high suede boots, this sentiment isn't a surprise.

MacGibbon is in good company. Most of the world's most influential designers — Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren, Miuccia Prada, and Yves Saint Laurent — have flourished with the clothes-to-live-in credo. And it was at the right hand of legendary designer Valentino Garavani, who also knows a thing or two about giving women what they want, that MacGibbon first learned the day-in-day-out of her trade, arriving to assist him straight from London's Central Saint Martins fashion school in 1996. "I feel really fortunate to have experienced the old-school approach there," she says. "That love of fabric and luxury above all else is actually very antifashion. Valentino was not interested in trends, which I love." For Garavani, the five years MacGibbon worked at his side were "fun," he says. "She brought a freshness to my studio and a precise feeling for what a girl wants to wear. She knows her customers, and she's determined and strong."

That strength sustained the 39-year-old Londoner through those first few collections at Paris-based Chloé. Though her manner is warm, it's no-nonsense. MacGibbon is deliberate when she speaks, taking her time to form each thought, looking you dead in the eye all the while. "I'd love to say I didn't read the reviews and didn't give a damn," she says, chuckling, after a pause, "but I wasn't swayed by them. I just didn't agree with them." MacGibbon had to defend what turned out to be some of her best decisions. She prescient in doing denim for spring, even though some thought that it didn't seem luxury enough. But it's one part the new Chloé equation that has buyers like Neiman Marcus's Ken Downing swooning. "Hannah was right on doing multiple denim pieces in one outfit. She showed ponchos for spring back when no one was doing it," he recalls. "Now everyone is. Under her, Chloé has become very much a runway to watch again." It's nice to be proven right. Of the much-loved denim, MacGibbon says, "My only regret now is not doing more of it."

MacGibbon's boss, Chloé chairman and chief executive Ralph Toledano, is solidly on board with his hire. "I feel good about investing in what Hannah is doing," he says. "We have a very good partnership. And the brand is back on track editorially, and formerly faithful shoppers are now coming back."

It's not like MacGibbon was an unknown quantity to Toledano when he gave her the job. She was first brought in to assist her friend Phoebe Philo after Stella McCartney's departure from the house in 2001. "Phoebe and I worked really closely together for five years," she says. "We had a great time, but it was a really intense journey." When Philo left in 2006, "I felt it was the end of an era," says MacGibbon. Chloé management begged her to take Philo's place. Twice. Instead, MacGibbon stepped back, reestablished her roots in London (she has a house in cool-kid Camden Town), did some interior-design work, and consulted for the label, helping to launch its hit perfume Chloé. Finally, after the house's ill fit with Melim Andersson, MacGibbon realized "Chloé was in my blood."

So it's been a worthy homecoming, if at times a stressful one. MacGibbon is only just taking her first breath after two years, renegotiating her arrangement with the company so she can spend more time in London, where she feels more creatively connected. Her goals now are more personal. "I'd love to have a baby! We need to get a baby in the mix at Chloé!" she says with a laugh, admitting there hasn't really been time to focus on such things just yet. "I'm trying to get my life back on track in a big way."

Staying in touch with some form of life outside of fashion is good for her eye too. But MacGibbon's hard-won new dominance is also a win for a label whose female fans have, since Chloé was founded by Gaby Aghion in 1952, relied on it to provide upscale ready-to-wear for actual flesh-and-blood women, not techno-bohemian princesses or dress-up dolls.

Aghion, the rare woman in what is still a male-dominated industry, was at the avant-garde of establishing ready-to-wear as a fashionable alternative to time-and-money-consuming couture. (She is now an occasional dinner partner of MacGibbon's and a strong supporter, although she no longer maintains a financial relationship with the company.) Chloé blasted off internationally under Karl Lagerfeld throughout the '70s, when it was the go-to brand for trendsetting women like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Brigitte Bardot, and it was finally revived in 1997 by Stella McCartney, who raided mother Linda's closet for Chloé originals and added a shot of her own Savile Row training. The mix of soft and structured has proven to work magic for Chloé ever since. "Tailoring is something Stella really started, whereas Karl was really about the dress," explains MacGibbon.

After McCartney left in 2001, Philo took the reins and suddenly every girl worth her "It" had to have one of Chloé's ethereal dresses and chunky, padlocked Paddington bags. Interestingly, McCartney, Philo, and MacGibbon all grew up in the same part of London and went to the same college. And so, with the notable exception of Lagerfeld — isn't he always? — the label has been a female-dominated creative enterprise. And it's patently evident in the utterly woman-friendly clothes.

It's also in Chloé's marketing campaigns, which have stressed undone, natural-looking beauty and mixed models with actresses known for their talent as well as their looks. (Rumple-haired blondes Clémence Poésy and Chloë Sevigny are faces of the signature perfume.) Reinforcing the everywoman strategy, with the exception of the above two and precious few others (the effortlessly chic Kate Bosworth comes to mind), the brand does not dress celebrities. MacGibbon would just as soon see Chloé on people like you and me. "Chloé is really more about women in general than icons or celebrities. That's the point of Chloé. It touches a sensitivity and reality that a lot of women have rather than some fantasy. The Chloé woman is not trying too hard." And if she is, she sure doesn't let the rest of us know.